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SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
animals in which no toxin-insusceptibility exists may be immune to the 
infection. In the latter case the specific source of habituation to the virus 
must be of cell-nature, the mobile phagocyte. 
New Pathogenic Bacillus, causing Epidemics among Laboratory 
Mice.* — Dr. H. Laser describes a bacillus which was found to be the 
exciting cause of severe mouse epidemics. It is a small organism about 
twice as long as broad, and exhibits extremely lively movements, having 
terminal and lateral flagella. It was stainable with all the usual 
anilin dyes, but was decolorized by Gram’s method. It grows well at 
ordinary temperatures, but better at incubation heat, and belongs to the 
acid-forming division. It thrives on the usual media, gelatin, agar, 
bouillon, potato, the gelatin being liquefied, and after three days the 
formation of gas bubbles was observed. From special experiments it 
was found that this bacillus belongs to the facultative aerobe class. 
Inoculation and feeding experiments made with pure cultivations 
showed that the bacillus was pathogenic to mice, guinea-pigs, and 
pigeons. 
The author seems to think that his bacillus is allied to a group 
of organisms supposed to be the cause of ferret disease and the 
American and French swine plagues, one of the chief characteristics of 
these being that they are decolorized by Gram’s method. The chief 
post-mortem appearance was great tumefaction of the spleen, and the 
virus was presumed to have been imported into the laboratory with 
carrots. 
Cultivation of Bacillus Leprse.f — Messrs. Kanthack and Barclay 
describe an apparently successful cultivation of Bacillus Leprae, the 
bacilli having morphological, biological, and staining properties greatly 
resembling those of the leprosy bacillus. The microbe was isolated from 
fresh leprous tissue in bouillon, and grew well on glycerin-agar. Great 
as the resemblances were, the behaviour towards nitric acid and methy- 
len-blue seems to have excited the authors’ suspicions, and they submit- 
ted their preparations to C. Fraenkel and Baumgarten, both of whom 
decided against it being Bacillus Leprae on the grounds that it was not 
morphologically identical therewith, that its resistance to acids was too 
feeble, and that it grew too easily on artificial media. The arbitrators 
considered it the saprophytic Bacillus epidermidis, which in all pro- 
bability is identical with Scheurlen’s cancer bacillus. 
Spirochseta anserina aud the Septicaemia of Geese.J — On some 
stations of the Transcaucasian Railway there appears every summer an 
epizootic among geese which die with typhoid symptoms, and Sakharoff 
has succeeded in finding in the blood of living (but not in dead) animals 
a microbe resembling Spirochseta. During the height of the disease 
these mobile microbes are frequently joined together in a stellate 
manner, and their appearance in the preparation is very transitory. 
Though mobile their motions are very stiff, and they do not exhibit the 
flexibility of those of Polymitus avium. From Vibrio Metschnikovi this 
* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., xi. (1892) pp. 184-9. 
+ Brit. Med. Journ., 1891, i. pp. 1222 and 1330; 1891, ii. p. 476. 
J Annal. de l’lnst. Pasteur, 1891, p. 564. See Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Para- 
sitenk., xi. (1892) p. 203. 
